Looking Good!

We have been enjoying squash and green beans fresh from our garden for the past week. It seems the yellow squash and zucchini almost grow right before our eyes! I don't know if you can tell from the photo but the zuchini toward the back is about 14 inches long! I didn't mean for it to get that big. I guess I overlooked it while picking the day before.

This pile of contender green beans is from one day's picking and from only one row! This will be enough for two meals for my guys. I spent the day processing these beans. I am freezing them because my family prefers frozen green beans over canned green beans. I put them in boiling water for 3 minutes then immediately put them in ice water to stop the cooking process. After that I air dry them on the counter top. Then I seal them up in my Food Saver. It is so easy and inexpensive to do and we get to enjoy green beans year round!

I will get more picture of the garden soon. Everything is growing so beautifully! We can see teeny baby cucumbers coming so I will be pickling soon. I wanted to use my own dill to make pickles but I am still waiting for my dill seed to break the ground. Oh well, I may have to buy a dill plant or I could make sweet pickles until my dill plants begin to grow. Decisions, decisions....

Oh, and I believe the tomato seeds that I planted back in February ALL came up!! I have never had so many tomato plants!! In fact, we are in the process of clearing out the grass on the side of our house so I can plant more tomatoes there. This is not the best planting location due to the shade part of the day but I am all out of room in the garden. I'll have to get some pictures of that as well. Trust me, I am making garden notes of all this so I will better prepared next year. My plan was to have enough tomatoes to make my own sauce and have canned tomatoes. However, I never expected such a success rate from seeds. And to think that I have paid dearly for my tomato plants in the past! The expense of growing from seed is a fraction of the cost I normally spent for a plant! Hmmmm....somebody is making some money....unfortunately it ain't me! Ha, Ha! I'm just trying to hang on to what we have :-)

Until next time!

Our Homemade Grill

The good Lord has made it possible for us to have this property and we love to share it with friends and family. Several times a year we have gatherings here. Sometimes it is just another family invited for a meal and other times we have a churchwide function or a family reunion. We enjoy the guests and we always manage to have a great time!

In the past, we always had to borrow a grill whenever we had a large crowd over. After a few times of using a grill graciously loaned by my brother-in-law, Monroe decided to build his own grill. My talented husband tweaked the plans a bit and came up with his own model and I must say the results are mouth watering!! Here he is welding the inside of the grill.

Here is the fire box for the grill. Actually, you might say this is a smoker because Monroe puts the meat on and leaves if for 2 to 3 hours to very slowly cook.

His speciality is ribs but I think my favorite is the whole chicken. If you think you like rotisserie chicken you should try this!

And here is the finished grill. Yes, that is a rifle welded onto the handle. Our friend welded one of his own rifles on as a finishing touch. I like the little pig welded onto the top! When Parker (our 2 yr. old grandson) saw this grill parked in the front yard he said, "I want wide choo-choo!"

I guess the smoke stack made it look like a train to him ;-)
I forgot to mention that this little black mobile grill is the second one he made. Here is a picture of the first one. It is much bigger and stationary. Once in a while we do need both grills going when we have a large crowd like the antique car show we had just a couple of weekends ago. It isn't quite as pretty but boy does it cook some delicious meats!!

We are ready for the big Mathews family reunion in July. I am sure we will have both grills going for a couple of days! When you have 9 brothers and sisters and their children and grandchildren coming plus aunts and uncles it makes for a HUGE gathering!

Annual Car Show

Do you love old cars? Well, this is my father-in-laws' passion. He has, in the past 10 years, collected over 30 antique cars. He restores them inside and out and they are truly beautiful!

He shows his cars locally at car shows several times a month. It is a nice hobby for Pop and he has made many new friends with the same interest.

This past weekend Monroe and I hosted a car show for Pop at our house. Now we have had many large gatherings at our house in the past mind you but NONE compared to the number of people that came out for this car show. I stepped out my front door and this is what I saw:

Our barn is 40 x 60 and it was filled to the max! We estimated between 250 and 300 people! These are fellow car collectors from a couple of different car clubs in our area. We even had live music! My sweet hubby once again out did himself with the delicious ribs and chicken he cooked up on his home made smoker/grill. (I will post about that later.) I made 15 gallons of sweet tea! Everyone brought a covered dish and what a feast we had! There was nothing left of the chicken and ribs.

Everyone had a great time and they are looking forward to next year....yikes....we better start cooking and making sweet tea!

Gardens Teach Patience

I love fresh vegetables from our garden! The taste beats grocery store veggies by far!! Spring and summer harvests are my very favorite and I am so excited to see our little plants growing and looking healthy! The vines above are rattlesnake beans. This is the first time I have ever tried them. I was inspired after reading Tnfarmgirl's blog on how prolific and delicious they are. I am hoping to have enough to can.

Squash was planted the earliest in our garden and I can already see some teeny baby squash on the plants! I froze some summer squash from last year's garden but I think I should have used the younger and more tender squash for freezing. I am keeping that in mind this year!

We also planted blackeyed peas, soy beans, cream peas, zippers, okra, corn, cucumbers, watermelon and cantaloupe. Corn is another first for us. Our neighbor's corn was destroyed by worms last year. If that happens to our corn I will just feed it to our animals. Either way it will be useful.

The picture above is my experiment. I have always bought my tomatoes and peppers as plants. This year I tried raising them from seed. The right half of this planter is tomatoes. They look great! The left half is a variety of peppers and they are not looking so hot (no pun intended!). I don't know what happened with them. I may be buying pepper plants again this year! I have transplanted part of the tomatoes into the big garden. I am amazed at how few it took to fill up a row!! I hope to be able to get the rest planted next week. One other problem I encountered. I labeled all the different types of peppers and tomatoes on the white plastic spoons you see sticking up. I used a permanant marker to write with. However, the first rain just washed all those names right off!! Now all I know is the left side is peppers and the right is tomatoes! We shall see....

Anyway, I can't wait to sit down to supper with a big plate of peas with okra and a slice of cornbread....mmmm....mmmm.....hurry up garden!

Congratulations Rhonda and Neal!!

A HUGE Congratulations is in order for my precious niece, Rhonda and her fiance, Neal.

In December she was surprised with an engagement proposal from the love of her life. We are all so happy for Rhonda and Neal! Rhonda is an example I am proud to have my children watch first hand. You see, Rhonda has been a Godly young woman. She has waited on the Lord to send the right man into her life. She has been patient and the wait has seemed endless and very lonely at times. But God is faithful and in His timing He has allowed two of His children to meet. They even lived a few states apart and their paths still crossed thanks to some very dear friends.

And Rhonda was quick to tell me that this wonderful man was worth the long wait! What blessings the Lord has for his faithful followers. This brings to my mind an old hymn, "Trust Me, Try Me, Prove Me saith the Lord of Hosts and a blesssing, unmeasured blessing I will pour out on thee. I think that sums it up nicely.

These two will have a private, small ceremony on April 4th. Then at a later date they will have a larger gathering for the renewal of their vows. I am so excited as I watch to see what the Lord has in store for these two! I love you Rhonda and I can't wait to meet Neal.

Aunt Pam ;-)

Room For One More

We have another addition to our little farm. Isn't he just the cutest little guy? We named him Little Bit. He needed a home because he was born with a defective front leg. He would have never made it out on the open pasture with his herd. He wouldn't be able to keep up with all the walking and grazing so our dear friends/ranchers asked if we would take him in.

He was quite the topic of conversation with all the "Moms" around our place. I have found that cows are very curious creatures! I think this picture is so funny! The cows on the other side of the fence belong to our neighbor but they all came to visit the new addition.

Here you can see that front leg at what I would call the knee joint. See how it is going backwards? Looks like he is double-jointed. Missy and MerryBelle, in the background, are not so sure about their new companion.

It took a couple of days for him to learn to take the bottle but finally we succeeded! I thought this was a very creative shot taken by Brandon.

Parker wanted to pet the new baby. He loves to go to Nanna and Poppa's and see all the animals. As long as Little Bit has a bottle he is very calm. I have fed him so much that anytime I go out to the pasture he runs up to me and starts bumping me. He has come a long way. When we first brought him home Monroe had to practically tackle him to be able to feed him. Finally he figured out that we were there to help him. Now he thinks I am his MOTHER!

Broken Arm

There has been plenty of excitement around our house the past few days. Unfortunately, it has not been an enjoyable excitement. Rather, it has been very stressful! The scripture "All things work together for good for them that love God and are called according to His purpose. Romans 8:28" has been going through my mind a lot. I am reminded that the Lord is in control of ALL things and I am very thankful for that.

First of all, Thursday afternoon Bryce and Brandon were playing on the awesome fort (justly named Fort Knox-I'll blog about that soon) that their dad built for them. On the fort they have a rope that they would swing on and climb. On Bryce's turn he swang out higher than usual. When he dropped he landed on his arms. I happened to be watching from the back porch and heard the "pop"! Okay all you Moms out there, don't judge me too harshly because I sort of lost it. I ran out to help Bryce but when I saw his deformed arm I ran back to the house, ran in circles, basically I was NO help!! Wait, I did somehow have the sense to pray. Anyway, thankfully Brooke and Brad were home to help me....errr....Bryce!

We called Dad at work. He came home and we rushed Bryce to the ER. Dad was a bit calmer than me and had enough wits about him to get a picture on the way to the hospital with his phone. That is the reason the pictures are smaller than normal. It looked like he had an elbow at his wrist!! Too much for this mom to see in one of her chickadees! I must say, inspite of his mother, Bryce was a very brave young man! He was crying, of course, but remained calm.

I don't know if you can make it out in this picture of the ex-rays but he broke both bones in his right arm just above the wrist. The big bone was completely displaced causing the deformed look....gulp! The Dr. admitted Bryce to the hospital and put his arm in a splint. The next day the Dr. realigned the bones. Bryce was put to sleep for this procedure. The Lord answered our prayers and no pins were needed. This picture is just before the surgery.

He was released from the hospital the next afternoon. He had a pretty painful weekend with the swelling and throbbing. Can you see the difference in the size of his fingers on both hands? I am happy to report he is doing much better now. Slowly getting around. Does anyone have a remedy for itching....Karen???

Another bump in our road of life happened during the time Bryce was in the hospital. We lost our pregnant goat, MilkyWay. She had some complications and we had been working with her doing all we could to help her but it just wasn't enough. It was very hard for me to take and for a time I felt like I am not cut out for this type of life, having so many animals and getting attached.

And yet another bump. Brooke, who is due in June with our first granddaughter : ), has had some problems with her rib-very, very, painful. It was getting much better but a couple of days ago she sneezed and heard the "pop" again in the same place. She has all the symptoms of Slipped Rib Syndrome. The Dr. has another name that I don't recall. Because she is pregnant there is not really anything she can do to help this condition. She has been coming over so I can help with her boys. She cannot lift or pull on anything. Please keep her in your prayers.

Well, that pretty much sums up life at our house these past few days. We still have so very much to be thankful to the Lord for. Bryce's arm and Brooke's rib will heal! As I looked around in the hospital at the other life-long diseases and sicknesses, I realized how very blessed we are. God is good-All the time!

Have a blessed day!